Monet Harbison

Monét Harbison was born in West Philly, a stone’s throw from Drexel’s campus. In fact, her first experience with higher education came in the form of a summer program for middle school students at Drexel University. Seeing the positive and negative impacts of predominately white institutions in predominately minority and lower socioeconomic status communities really shaped her philosophy on diversity, equity, education, and access. Monét is a 2nd year PhD student and a research assistant in the Reframing Outcomes Through Afro-Centric Research (R.O.A.R) lab. Her faculty mentors are Ebony White, PhD and Christopher Wright, PhD — both of whom she credits for constantly pushing her in her doctoral journey. Currently, Monét serves as leader of research compliance, integrity, and security in the Office of Research and Innovation and as interim research integrity officer for the University.

After the murder of George Floyd, Monét realized that there was a real need to have conversations centering on diversity, equity, inclusion, and access within the Drexel community. This idea led to the creation of the ORI Diversity Dialogue series, where Monét and her colleagues led authentic conversations about allyship, power, privilege, and intersectionality, especially as it relates to Drexel’s place and responsibility in Philadelphia. Additionally, Monét has given talks on the impacts of gender and racial bias in executing compliance requirements and serves as a thought leader on the topic of research security. Monét is very active within the Drexel community; she served on two committees within the Anti-Racism Task Force, is currently a vice president for the Black Employees at Drexel (BEAD) colleague resource group, is a member of the Graduate Diversity Advisory Council, created and chairs the Black. Ed. Journal club and is a part of the DL 2020 leadership cohort for this year. Monét believes that above all, the way to disassemble silos and create a welcome community is through education and collaboration.